Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Against the backdrop of a cooling overall market sentiment, the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen a pullback, and the discussion around mainstream altcoins has also declined. However, among the "blockbuster" projects that continue to be hotly debated in the community, besides the WLFI that launched yesterday, another major focus is the new stablecoin-specific blockchain Plasma, co-invested by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legend investor Peter Thiel, with the token XPL, which has already been listed for contract trading on several mainstream exchanges.
Why is Plasma riding the market wave?
Plasma has become a new darling of the market, partly due to the backing of large institutions and partly due to its clear project positioning.
On the capital side, Plasma is backed by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legend investor Peter Thiel, which is a strong endorsement in itself. From the end of 2024 to early 2025, the project completed seed and Series A financing rounds, raising a total of $24 million; subsequently, in May 2025, Founders Fund made an additional investment at a $500 million valuation. Bitfinex also invested $3.5 million separately to promote the application of USDT in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Such a dense financing rhythm and capital lineup give Plasma the aura of a "star project" right from its debut.
In terms of technical design and product positioning, Plasma does not follow the old path of a general-purpose public chain but instead targets the native infrastructure for stablecoins. It uses the Bitcoin mainnet as the final settlement layer, inheriting the security of the UTXO model while being compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, facilitating seamless migration of smart contracts. More attractively, all on-chain transactions can be paid directly with USDT, and ordinary transfers of USDT are completely free, significantly lowering the usage threshold for stablecoin payments.
On this basis, Plasma further strengthens its differentiated advantages, allowing users to selectively hide transaction information through its privacy features; by using permissionless bridging technology to bring BTC on-chain, combined with Tether's dollar depth pool, users can achieve low-slippage exchanges and BTC-based stablecoin lending. With "zero fees + high performance + secure architecture," Plasma aims to create an on-chain version of the "Visa network," allowing stablecoin payments to truly enter everyday scenarios.
How is the Plasma token distributed?
XPL Token Model
In mid-July, Plasma announced the economic model for XPL, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens, distributed as follows:
- Public Sale: 10% of the total supply, or 1 billion tokens. Among these, XPL for non-U.S. purchasers will be fully unlocked when the Plasma public mainnet test version launches; XPL for U.S. purchasers will be locked for 12 months and will be fully unlocked on July 28, 2026.
- Ecosystem and Project Growth: 40% of the total supply, or 4 billion tokens. Of this, 8% is allocated for strategic partners to provide DeFi incentives, meet liquidity needs, support exchange integration, and implement early ecosystem growth activities, which will be unlocked immediately upon the launch of the mainnet test version; an additional 32% is allocated for a strategic growth plan aimed at expanding the utility, liquidity, and institutional adoption of the Plasma network, which will be unlocked proportionally each month over three years after the mainnet test version launch.
- Team: 25% of the total supply, or 2.5 billion tokens. One-third will be unlocked one year after the public launch of the mainnet test version, and the remaining two-thirds will be unlocked proportionally each month over the following two years.
- Investors: 25% of the total supply, or 2.5 billion tokens. The unlocking schedule is the same as that of the team.
XPL Token Model
The XPL token economic model is divided into four parts, with an overall distribution that is easy to understand, and the team tokens will only begin to unlock one year after the mainnet test version goes live, so there is no risk of a "dump" from the project side in the short term.
Next, we will focus on the 1 billion tokens allocated for the public sale and the 800 million tokens allocated to strategic partners in the ecosystem and project growth.
Public Sale Distribution
For the 10% allocated for the public sale, the sale price is $0.05, and based on the current XPL contract price (currently reported at $0.62), the yield exceeds 12 times.
To participate in the public sale, users need to deposit stablecoins from the Ethereum mainnet into the Plasma Vault. On the evening of June 9, the deposit channel officially opened, allowing users to deposit USDT, USDC, USDS, or DAI into the Plasma Vault on the Ethereum mainnet, with the final allocation calculated based on "time-weighted shares," meaning the earlier and longer the deposit, the more allocation received.
The deposit activity was exceptionally popular, reaching the target amount in just 2 minutes. Among them, a certain whale/institutional address (address: https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/address/0x790c42D632502949e72Ab0981C2f0D2021141023) alone pledged 50 million USDC, accounting for 20% of the total share.
Single address deposit of 50 million USDC
In addition, a certain whale spent 39.15 ETH (worth about $100,000) in gas fees to become the first address to pledge 10.17 million USDC to Plasma.
First completed deposit pledge address gas cost $100,000
Due to a large number of users reporting unsuccessful participation in the deposit activity, Plasma raised the deposit cap to 1 billion USDT, and astonishingly, another 500 million USDT was "filled" in just half an hour, with an Amber Group-related address depositing 16.3 million USDT and a Spartan Group-related address depositing 5 million USDT.
On July 17, Plasma officially launched the public sale. The eligibility of users participating in the subscription was determined based on the "time-weighted shares" from their previous deposits into the Vault. The public sale price was set at $0.05 per token, with the final total subscription amount exceeding $373 million, indicating extremely high subscription enthusiasm, with oversubscription reaching over 7 times.
Binance Wealth Management Distribution
According to official news, Plasma has partnered with Binance to allocate 1% of the total supply, or 100 million XPL tokens, to users participating in on-chain earning activities, and users depositing USDT can also earn an annualized 2% USDT yield. In the early stages of the activity, Binance set a subscription limit of 250 million USDT, with a single account limit of 100,000 USDT, which was sold out in less than an hour. Subsequently, the platform raised the total subscription limit to 1 billion USDT.
In the second round of opening, the new limit of 250 million USDT was fully subscribed in just 5 minutes. As a result, Binance lowered the single account subscription limit to 10,000 USDT and opened the final 500 million USDT limit. Due to the slowdown in subscription progress after the limit was lowered, Binance raised the single account limit back to 50,000 USDT, and the remaining limit was fully subscribed within a few hours.
Based on Binance's final allocation of a total limit of 1 billion USDT, users can expect to receive approximately 1,000 XPL tokens for every 10,000 USDT deposited. In terms of price, XPL reached a peak of over $0.84 last week, and the current contract price is $0.62. This means that, at the current price, the token value for a user depositing 10,000 USDT is approximately $600, and at the peak price, it could reach $840. In addition to the airdropped token earnings, the USDT deposit itself can earn 0.33% in 2 months, which is about $33 in guaranteed returns.
Therefore, overall, for every 10,000 USDT deposited, users can ultimately receive $33 in guaranteed earnings + 1,000 XPL tokens (valued at approximately $600 at the current price, potentially reaching $800 at the peak), resulting in a 2-month yield of about 6.3%, annualized close to 40%.
It is worth mentioning that, aside from the 100 million tokens allocated to Binance, the distribution of the remaining 700 million XPL tokens in the ecosystem and project growth section has not yet been announced.
Summary
Following the launch of WLFI, Plasma's launch has also become a focal point of market attention. Based on the fluctuation range of the XPL contract price between $0.5 and $0.8, the total market value of XPL could reach $5 to $8 billion. On the day of launch, the maximum circulation was about 18% (tokens for U.S. KYC users will not be unlocked immediately), corresponding to a circulating market value of approximately $900 million to $1.44 billion.
According to CoinGecko data, the circulating market value of the 100th ranked token, INJ, is about $1.24 billion. With strong institutional support and being in the currently popular stablecoin sector, if the market continues to favor it, a price breakthrough of $1 and a launch circulating market value of $1.8 billion is not impossible; this may just be the starting point for its upward potential.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
